


Push Hard Enough

by thought



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Non-Graphic Torture, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 08:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5960950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're under cover as their past selves, and the only problem is that five years ago Root would have happily tortured Agent Sameen Shaw for information. The only problem is they're being asked to prove it. The only problem is how this is less of a problem than it should be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Push Hard Enough

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to [AliceInKinkland](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/aliceinkinkland) for the read through and the invaluable feedback and the encouragement on my way to hell.

The man sitting across the desk from you wants to speak to a murderer.

You know how to play a lot of roles, but it's always easier when you can just pull a part of yourself forward and make it the most true. The man across the desk also wants a government agent tied up in the basement, and you know somewhere three stories beneath your feet Sameen has twisted the Rubik's cube of her identity under dim electric lighting and heavy metal handcuffs. She's playing her part. Time for you to step up.

You stumble back through a minefield of guilt and affection, claw three, four, five years back. Hubris sits hot like bile in the back of your throat.

Ok. Take stock. There is a knife in your hand. There is an iron, a gun, a keyboard. There is becoming the villain; there is growing up and maybe that's the same thing; there is the recognition that this ability to sidestep morality and emotion marks you as already broken. What do you do with something shattered when the edges are still jagged enough to cut?

A lot of things need cutting these days.

Here is a body. Here is your hand, and here is the place where they meet. This is not your body, no matter what the mouth says. No matter what you think about in the middle of the night when she's beside you in bed, breath and scars and every mark that sings survival a footnote to evidence of damage, page after page saved to the hard drive of your mind for safekeeping. Maintain records. This will never go away. You will always be held accountable.

The man across the desk is one of hundreds. A placeholder. You could shoot him and it wouldn't make a difference, you could shoot him and he'd regenerate at the spawn point, walk back into the office, loosen his tie and say "I've heard you've gone soft. I need proof that the rumours aren't true. You've got twenty-four hours to extract the information."

They _all_ think you've gone soft. The implication is vulnerability, a hand pushed up into the underbelly of something warm, blood and love spilling out if you push hard enough. You log the inaccuracy and hold on tight. There is nothing warm and breathing in code and wires and plastic, no place where something will give if simply pushed hard enough.

Every system has a flaw. The likelihood of incursion is minimal, but the potential damage is staggering. So he loosens his tie and he enters a line of code and maybe you fall apart, just a little bit.

_Critical system error._

They give you an empty room. They give you a bag of tools and an objective and then they give you Sameen Shaw.

"Don't," she says, and the hole in your system starts to repair itself, hope and relief fizz through your blood. "Don't lose your nerve. I'm trained to handle torture. Getting them to trust you is more important."

The hope dies quietly. No one notices.

She watches you, which is maybe the worst thing. You cut a shallow line across her chest, just above her breasts, just enough to reveal blood like a flash of indecent ankle, and she keeps her eyes on you the entire time. She breathes out when you cut and tips her head back and her entire body is pliant and easy in the chair. You think, maybe, you have experienced two moments worse than this one in your entire life.

"Come on, you've got to make it realistic," she says. "You of all people should know how to make torture look convincing."

"There are probably cameras," you say. "No microphones, but that doesn't mean they can't lip read."

She smirks. "Want me to beg? Make it look good for the cameras?"

"Shut up. This isn't funny." Your hand is shaking. A betrayal. Flesh is weak and you hate that your body can hurt her body, hate these vulnerabilities you're trapped inside.

"How long should I hold out, you think?" she asks. "I mean, realism can only go so far. We both know if this were for real you'd never get anything out of me."

"Making me angry isn't going to work," you say. "And if it did I don't know if I could ever live with myself."

You watch her quietly for a minute. Breathe deeply. Everything inside your head is very loud and you have to take the time to turn down each knob one by one. You put a hand on her shoulder, let the familiar heat of her skin ground you. You glance at the camera. You break her left ring finger.

You don't want to look at her, but there is part of you that wants the penance and part of you that wants the pleasure and so you catalogue the widening eyes, the very slight space between her lips when she breathes in, the muscle that jumps in her forearm as she pulls against the restraints reflexively. It all passes in a second, and then she breathes out the tension, meets your eyes with her own.

You cut deeper across the meet of her shoulder. The Machine hums reassurance in your ear, tells you where to cut to leave the least damage. You think She would do this, if you asked. Think She is kind enough to allow you to become just another tool in the process. You don't. Sameen doesn't trust Her the way you do, and She shouldn't have to bare the weight of your past choices, the deliberately crafted persona of years that still holds sway in certain circles. To remove yourself from the situation would be cruel to both of them.

Sameen is still and passive under your hands. Her eyes flutter closed now and then, her hands lie deliberately palm up and open. She smiles a bit, sometimes, and there's no tension in her muscles after that first automatic twitch. It makes something ashamed and scared wind around your spine, and in a fit of panic you press the flat of the blade right against her throat with no warning. She doesn't even flinch, and you don't know how to contain all the feelings pushing at your skin from the inside. It is one thing for her mind to trust you to hurt her. It's another thing entirely for her body to do the same.

You go to your knees for her, maybe three hours in. There's no iron, but you've got a lighter, and you use the flame to burn an anatomically correct heart into the skin of her inner thigh. You use a pencil to draw wires tangled and complex over and around it and don't let yourself wonder what your observers will make of it.

You're quiet throughout everything, for the most part. You can't imagine anything you could say to make this anything other than what it is. Sometimes Sameen makes a point of catching your gaze, smiles reassuringly like it's you who needs the kindness. At one point she says "I know you're upset and there's nothing I can do to change it, but I still want you to know I'm not angry. This isn't your fault. And it's... this is the best way for this situation to go. It's not bad when it's you. It makes it easier. When you hurt me it isn't a bad thing. I'm used to it."

She smirks a bit. You have to walk away and crouch in the corner with your arms around your stomach until you think you can move without throwing up. When you finally look at her, she looks confused. Irritated. The Machine is talking you down, helping to restrict access to the parts of you that hate yourself until a later time when you can deal with them in a safe environment. You get back to your feet and for a few seconds you're absolutely certain you can't continue. There are four guards outside. You could probably take them out with Her help.

"I'm gonna be really pissed if these last hours were for nothing," Sameen says, like she can read your mind in 16 point bold and underlined.

You tase her.

You maintain your distance, not just physically. Watch her body spasm and jerk against the bonds, keeping your expression carefully blank, even when she looks up at you. You wonder, distantly, what else she knows about you that you can't speak aloud. Wonder if she stands at the stove and reaches for the dial and waits for the day when you press her arm down to kiss her skin with the burner. Wonder if she knows the casual afternoon kisses or brush of hands in passing that some days you have to fight to keep gentle, not to let become bites or bruises. You're self-aware enough to keep these small, unforgivable unkindnesses locked deep in your core where they can't escape, but Sameen's access grows every day and you know one day she'll find something that will force her away. She's a pragmatist. She knows how to keep herself safe.

It isn't that you want her to come to harm. Each time she's seriously injured, every confused moment of rare emotion makes you want to throw yourself in front of her to play protector, to take the pain yourself. But all the small hurts are yours. The slight hitch in her breath, the wrinkle in her forehead, the tongue darting out to lap a fleck of blood from skin. You capture each one, each tiny hurt a fragment of code, slowly compiling over years. There are things that you want to do to her that you don't speak aloud-- things beyond the playful safety of sexual kink, things rooted in devotion and care but getting all tangled up in your head until they translate in ways that you know don't look like affection. Here, in this concrete room with the guards forcing your hand and the sick feeling in your stomach and the blank, unresponsive passivity of her body, this is not even close to those things.

You stroke her hair off her forehead while she's still shuddering and immobile from the electricity. Her skin is hot against your palm, her hair damp and tangled.

"That's enough," you say, softly. "We're done now, Sam."

"Thought we were going with realism," she forces out. Defiant and proud even when there's no call for it.

You shake your head, keep stroking her hair, the fragile bones of her skull under your fingers. "We are, sweetie. I'm telling you we're done. I'll get the boss in here, and you're going to tell him the story Harold came up with."

"He's not gonna buy it."

You stare down at the exposed curve of her throat, the way her head tips instinctively to rest against your hand. "Yes, he will."

*

Later, she talks you through treating her wounds, makes you put towels on the sofa to protect it from blood stains, glares until you phone in an order for the terrible pizza she likes, steals the remote and makes you watch sports until she falls asleep. She sprawls in your lap, curves her body to fit against yours, takes your gentle touches with the same easy acceptance she'd taken the pain. You do not think you are ever going to feel worthy of her. Do not understand how she can throw herself up against all your jagged edges and remain undamaged, even when they cut.


End file.
